Saratoga: the glorious course where you couldn't feel more alive

The first in a three-part series, with the following two instalments available in print and to Members' Club subscribers

At four o'clock in the morning the body is at its lowest ebb, the circadian rhythm of life reduced to a murmur. Two hours later, among the barns and byways of the Saratoga backstretch, you couldn't feel more alive.

Saratoga is cocooned in a soft grey fog, out of which depths horses emerge and disappear again, the only evidence of their passing a few hoofprints in the dirt and the breathy sound of hard work.

One barrels past in a ghostly white hood, a wraith horse, as Tom Morley peers into the gloom in search of a pair of two-year-olds, a Scat Daddy filly named To A Friend and her stablemate Kastano, and in their turn they glide into view, just a gentle piece of work, and he nods with satisfaction.

"Everyone wants a winner at Saratoga," he says. "Maybe we're lacking a star at the moment, but we're always looking for the next good horse, just like everyone else." The good horses are out there somewhere, hard to find in the fog.

Britain and Ireland have racing yards and miles and miles of gallops, but the American way is the fabled arena of the barns on the backstretch, the stage behind the scenes, a whole town of temporary accommodation for the stars of the sport.

The 80-plus barns at Saratoga are in two locations, some on the true backstretch on the far side of the track, the others clustered around the Oklahoma training circuit on the other side of the road.

Some of the barns are much smarter than others: Todd Pletcher's shedrow is garlanded with purple and white flowers, and here and there the paint is fresh. Morley, 36, son of the late Gold Cup-winning trainer David, surveys his territory with a wry smile.

"Slightly archaic," he offers. Keith McCalmont, the New York Racing Association's communications manager, softens the description. "Rustic. It's all part of the charm."

The charm is considerable; the fog can't obscure that. The avenues of old wooden barns, a horse's head peering out of every one, are lined with trees, Saratoga's sylvan setting a byword for old-school class and prestige.

Trainer Rob Atras watches his string work

The horses have been running here in upstate New York since 1863, and if some of the barns look as though they haven't felt a carpenter's touch since then it all adds to the atmosphere. The image you probably have in mind of the orderly chaos of the backstretch is borne out beautifully.

Sleepy-eyed hotwalkers lead their charges up and down the shedrows, cooling them off after exercise, the polyglot chatter illustrating racing's league of nations while underlining the lingua franca of 'horse'.

A woman pushes a broom, humming a tune to herself and anyone who might be listening, the smile on her face a counterpoint to the slow and mournful melody.

Bales of straw are strewn everywhere, bandages and rubbing cloths hang drying from cords strung from post to post, there are buckets and bridles and saddles and blankets and barrows, a cat or two on the lookout for mice and, uniquely, a large goat called Gilbert lying down outside the racing office of Rob Atras.

Atras tilts back his baseball cap, the better to watch a horse with the unpromising name of Red Mule being trotted up and down between the puddles.

"I love Saratoga," he says, speaking not for the majority but for the entire constituency. "It's wonderful, the whole atmosphere. I came here with my family when I was a lot younger and never dreamed I'd be training here. Saratoga's a small town, my kind of town."

Atras is 34, in his first year with a licence, his first year with a barn at Saratoga, he and his wife Brittney – a graduate of the Darley Flying Start scheme who describes the amiable Gilbert as 'head of security' – climbing the ladder together.

They started with eight horses, now have 25 installed at Saratoga for the eight-week summer meeting, and while Atras mutters about the strength of competition – "It can be hard to find the right spot for them; you think you're sending a horse out with a winning chance only to find it’s fifth or maybe sixth choice" – Brittney explains the other side of the story.

"We're on a learning curve this year, and on the backstretch it's really good to see how trainers who are at the top of their game train every day. It can be a great help. We do everything around the barn that needs to be done – obviously we have very good staff but I do the business side of the operation, I also groom, I hotwalk, I ride work. Rob's the same, except he doesn’t ride. The coolest part of the job is when you know that your hard work is being rewarded."

Atras has won two races at Saratoga this summer, a long way behind perennial front-runner Chad Brown but twice as many as Morley has managed with his 20 horses. The Englishman abroad echoes his fellow trainer's words about Saratoga's competitive nature and alloys them with the optimism that lurks within every trainer's breast.

"It's been very quiet this summer, but we'll have maybe a dozen runners between now and the end of the meet, so perhaps we can turn it round. It doesn't matter when they win, after all, and it would be great to finish off the meet strongly. I miss British racing terribly but I've no plans to come back. It's a lot easier to stay in business over here when you can run in maidens worth ninety thousand."

Even those riches are small potatoes for the Grade 1-winning factory overseen by Brown, who drives his golf cart – such is Saratoga's vast acreage that everyone gets around by four-seater golf cart, with plenty pimping their rides from the standard issue with paint jobs or wide wheels – over to the racetrack proper with leading owner Peter Brant riding shotgun.

The Oklahoma training track at Saratoga

Brant's long-familiar two-tone green silks were recently carried to Grade 1 glory by crack distaffers Sistercharlie and Dunbar Road, and as he watches some slightly lesser lights pound the dirt he ponders aloud on the chances of his Prix du Jockey Club winner Sottsass upsetting the Enable applecart in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

If that's literally half a world away then back at the Oklahoma circuit, where the fog has lifted sufficiently to reveal the splendour of the Saratoga estate, oh what a beautiful morning indeed, it's a metaphorical world away for Atras and Morley, standing by the wooden shack used by the clockers who faithfully time every horse in its orbit, every workout, unerringly locating their charges amid the dizzying blizzard of browns, greys and chestnuts.

One horse receives a washdown

The lethargy of four o'clock in the morning gave way to the energy of six o'clock, and in turn the mood feels rather different at the afternoon's unflinching assizes – 1.54, say, when Morley's Cottonwood Falls finishes last of seven in an allowance race, or 4.34, when Storm Prophet finishes off the board for Atras in an allowance optional claimer, or yet 5.06, when Xanthique runs a solid but unavailing third in the feature Riskaverse Stakes for Morley.

It's not only hard currency that enriches, though. After exercise rider Sean Duffy updates Morley on the performance of To A Friend, he leans against the running rail and fleshes out the philosophy that fuels the natives of the backstretch, racing's little home from home.

"I've been around horses my whole life," he says. "I was riding back home in Florida when I was three, I galloped horses in the morning before going to high school. I'm bred to it just as the horses are.

"What's the best thing? Having the chance of being around a really good horse, it's fun to watch them develop, to feel them change and move forward. Saratoga's the best. The best atmosphere, the best racing, it's top notch, the creme de la creme. And that filly went nicely this morning. I like the way she's going. She could be good."

So let the afternoons bring what they will. It's morning again in America; rise and shine.

A cooling drink after work for one horse

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